YouTube: Your Next Movie Rental Store

Google’s setting out to prove that YouTube’s not just a place for Chocolate Rain and Keyboard Cat by reportedly working out a deal to rent actual Hollywood movies. The Wall Street Journal’s unnamed source says Lionsgate, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. are aboard, and that videos will cost the usual market price of $4. There is a chance that some of the movies will be ad-supported, Hulu-style. Google would get a 30 percent cut of the revenue, with the studios taking the rest. Word is that roughly 10,000 Google employees will try out the service over the next couple of months, with no release date discussed and no official word from YouTube. For now, we’ll have to settle for Reefer Madness and Hercules in New York. [Wall Street Journal via Electronista]